Technology vs. organization

It occurs to me that technology is a force multiplier for organization, not a replacement for it. The Romney team wasn’t the first organization I’ve seen that made such a mistake. If the tech had actually performed up to specifications under Election Day stress, they’d have done better, but they were still running very short on the kind of shoe-leather go-get-the-voters operations they needed, and which Democrats excel at, particularly in big-city machine areas. Let no one forget Election Night 2012, when after weeks of observable ennui about an incumbent with a weak record, those big cities erupted like blue mushroom clouds over the electoral landscape.

The GOP candidate starts in a pretty big hole against a system like that, coupled with a generally aggressive get-out-the-vote effort from the Obama team. There’s no room for error in their ground game. But instead, they made the mistake of many corporate teams, and assumed their hot new software would conjure an effective, coordinated operation from the ether.